body recomposition vs fitness

the great fitness deception

‘Health and fitness’ does not mean ‘lean, ‘energetic’, ‘strong’, ‘toned’, ‘muscular’, ‘athletic’ or any of the other positive terms people mistake it for. ‘Health‘ is defined in the Oxford dictionary as: “The state of being free from illness or injury“. ‘Fit‘ is defined as: “In good health, especially because of regular physical exercise“. Health and fitness are only about not being sick or injured. There is no such thing as getting fitter or healthier than not being sick or injured.

These definitions are vitally important because these are the definitions lawyers, doctors and educators use to define the acceptable goals, methods and scope of the health and fitness industry. And these definitions show health and fitness is about not being physically exceptional; it is about being absolutely unexceptional. Health and fitness is the lowest state of mediocrity above disease. But it gets worse.

‘Exercise‘ is defined as merely being: “Activity requiring physical effort, carried out to sustain or improve health and fitness“. Fitness exercise is, therefore, very different to ‘training‘ which is defined as: “The action of undertaking a course of exercise and diet in preparation for a sporting event“.

Fitness exercise is literally any random physical activity to not be sick or injured. It has no designs for achieving a lean, muscular body nor any sort of athleticism. Training is about achieving a specific sports performance level. But training for sports performance is a risk to injury; and therefore training for sports performance is a risk to health and fitness. This is why sports coaching is explicitly excluded from a fitness professional’s scope of practice.

Fitness professionals cannot train clients for sports performance because sport is a risk to health (i.e. a risk of injury). Fitness professionals can only encourage clients to undertake random exercise for no purpose other than doing the exercise.

Fitness exercise is beneficial to improving the mediocrity of sedentary people, neutral to maintaining the mediocrity of average, active people but negative to athletes because it contradicts their very specific training for sports. And this is why fitness exercise is completely inappropriate to achieving a lean, muscular physique. In many cases it will actually prevent that achievement.

body recomposition

Body Recomposition is the process of becoming lean, muscular, athletic, toned or whatever other term you prefer for a better body! By definition, Body Recomposition is going BEYOND the mediocrity of ‘fitness’. It involves measured sports performance training and diet to achieve a measured, desirable, athletic figure or physique of whatever extreme you desire. Whether you are talking about a flat tummy or pro bodybuilding, its all body recomposition; not fitness!

‘Body composition’ is defined in the dictionary as being: “The chemical constituents or tissues of which a living organism is composed; especially the relative proportion of fat and lean tissue in the body of a human or animal“

Body re-composition is, therefore, the manipulation of body composition; specifically, changing the quantities and proportion of fat and lean tissue in the body.

The full Recomp definition of body recomposition is:

The planned manipulation of body size, fat mass and muscle mass,
using measured weight training and sport nutrition prescriptions,
to improve the ratio of muscle mass to body fat and/or bodyweight,
beyond the mediocrity of fitness or utility or sport.

Critically, body recomposition involves the methodical measuring and planning that is inherent to the correct application of the scientific method and critical to success in any professional endeavour.

In direct contrast to ‘fitness’ where the objective is to ‘destroy the body you hate’, body recomposition is creating the body you want, by design!

who is body recomposition for?

Body Recomposition is for any healthy person who wants a good or great body. But it is only for people who are willing to work harder and eat better in order to be better than average and become the best they can be.

Fitness is for every sick to average person to maintain a minimum state of mediocrity. Hence, most Fitness training prescriptions are rehabilitation techniques from Physiotherapy. Unless you were born with an amazing body, things like walking on a treadmill, ‘functional training’, ‘core stability’, swiss/bosu balls, Pilates etc do not create great bodies. They aren’t designed to. They are designed for ‘fitness’ mediocrity. As the names suggest, they are literally training techniques for normal human function and nothing more!

recomp vs fitness measurements

Body Recompositioning focusses solely on the manipulation of bodily fat, weight and muscularity levels as measured by regular body composition testing. All nutritional and exercise interventions are meticulously measured and planned to achieve specific, measured changes in bodyfat and lean, muscle mass.

By contrast, in ‘Fitness’, if anything is measured then they are things such as heart rate, oxygen uptake, flexibility and other amorphous qualities that have no relevance to bodyfat and composition.

Fitness professionals are not legally allowed to prescribe diets! The extent they can help is to ‘recommend’ random ‘healthy’ food choices and malnourishing starvation for indiscriminate ‘weight loss’. Curtin University measured their prescriptions as having a 95% failure rate!

recomp vs fitness exercise

Body Recompositioning exercise is measured and planned strength training. Again, everything has a purpose to achieve a specific body outcome. Training targets are designed to parallel muscularity goals. And the training is structured to work synergistically with the sports nutrition program for ultimate fat loss and muscularity.

‘Fitness’ exercise is deliberately low-intensity, low-risk movements designed to achieve and maintain ‘normal’ physical capability. Concepts like ‘functional training’ and ‘core stability’ are meant literally – they are literally training for normal, non-athletic human function without such maladies as ‘back pain’! They have nothing to do with looking like a gymnast or making the abdominal muscles become visible!

conclusion

Fitness is literally the minimum physical state a person needs to not be mildly debilitated. If a person abuses themselves badly enough to become ‘unfit’, they can return to fitness quickly and easily with any variety of activities and simply not eating poorly. With 60% of the Australian population deemed ‘overweight’ and ‘unfit’, fitness IS a legitimate need in our society. But do not mistake it for being something aspirational.

Body recompositioning is for anybody who wants to improve their body beyond the mediocrity of being just ‘fit’. It involves the disciplined application of measured strength exercise and sports nutrition to achieve extraordinary improvements in the form and function of the human body. Body Recomposition is what Recomp is all about!